Joanna Kakissis

Bert Nap has had enough. On a recent night, the longtime Amsterdam resident opened his door to confront a gaggle of young, drunken British men, all dressed as Elvis for a bachelor party, making a tremendous ruckus.

Nap asked them: "Why don't you do that in your own hometown?"

This was hardly the first time he'd been disturbed by late-night revelers. Many are tourists who vomit in his potted plants, urinate in his mailbox, and scream-sing outside his door. "My city is seen as one where anything goes," he says.

Fire officials in Greece say at least 74 people have died from surprisingly fast-moving wildfires that struck near Athens on Monday, with the death toll tripling in what has become a national tragedy. The fires have sent people scrambling to escape and have put intense pressure on fire and rescue agencies.

Our series "Take A Number" looks at problems around the world — and the people trying to solve them — through the lens of a single number. Today's number: 10 — that's the percentage of Hungarians who feel "totally comfortable" having an immigrant as a friend.

Every day at noon, Ibrar Hussein Mirzai hears the cathedral bells as he leaves his intensive Hungarian-language class in the small, leafy town of Fót, just north of Hungary's capital Budapest.

Eighteen-year-old Israel "Izzy" Ogunsola loved soccer and studied computer programming. On Wednesday, he cycled away from his home in Hackney, northeast London. At 8 p.m., he was stabbed. He staggered toward police officers but bled to death near a railway bridge as the police, paramedics and a trauma doctor tried to save him.

When the hearse carrying the body of professor Stephen Hawking arrived at the university church of St. Mary the Great in Cambridge, the bell rang 76 times — to mark each year of the renowned physicist's life.

His coffin was draped with white flowers — lilies for the universe, roses for the polar star. Six pallbearers carried the coffin from Gonville & Caius College, where Hawking was a fellow for more than 50 years.

To an outsider, this most Balkan of conflicts looks absurd: two countries fighting over a name and a historical icon who lived 25 centuries ago.

But the 26-year-old dispute between two southeastern European neighbors — Greece and Macedonia, over who owns the name "Macedonia" — is seen by both sides as existential and essential to national identity.

Greece, which prizes its ancient history above everything else, is especially sensitive.

Being married to a woman was how he hid his eight-year relationship with another man, also a married father. It was a way to survive in Chechnya, a largely Muslim southwestern republic of Russia where gay men are reportedly sent to torture camps and even killed.